Kliem Simon

In
the area of trade with EU countries we have given up our right to
decide that, for instance, a particular product should not be imported
into Malta
or should be subject to taxes upon importation or should be imported in
small quantities. We can no longer do this. In this respect, our
decision to join the EU and give up this right has exposed our local
enterprises, across the whole spectrum of our economy, to the
competitive forces of an open market. … in the area of trade with EU
countries we can say that we have given up part of our sovereignty to
decide for ourselves on our own. … No, we will not be the ones with the greatest say.

The Times 15.9.2004

The
Nationalist Party is divided. And it is high time that we come clean on
this one. People are loathe to trust a party in government if it is
unable to stand united. So unless unity is restored, the party is in for
a rough ride.

Simon Busuttil u l-Ksur tal-Ligi

In a public meeting in Vittoriosa
last Sunday, he urged the Attorney General to “publish all reports” related to
Mr Schembri and his accountant, Brian Tonna. Technically, Simon Busuttil was
asking the Attorney General to break the law twice – first by getting a copy of
the report and then by publishing it. … To attack the Attorney General and
expect him to break the law, however, is not on. … the PN’s personal attack on
the Attorney General is nothing short of obnoxious.

Michael Falzon ex Ministru
Nazzjonalista

Maltatoday.com.mt 16
May 2017, 7:30am

Dwar Simon Busuttil

Xarabank debate – 14.3.2014

Dr Busuttil didn’t really have an overall strategy. He was caught
completely off guard at one point, when the PM asked him a question. Dr
Busuttil was in a world of his own and was prompted by the moderator to answer
the question. He very clearly had no clue as to what it was and he said he
would answer later, which he didn’t.

Editorjal, The Malta Independent 18.3.2014

The PN has struggled to reinvent itself since the leadership changed,
and saw Simon Busuttil take over the helm from stalwart former leader Lawrence Gonzi.

Editorjal, The Malta Independent 16.4.2014

The new PN leader fails the ‘blink test’ – not enough people can close
their eyes and imagine him at Castille, including the staunchest of his
supporters.

Dr Busuttil may be right but he has
not much to be proud of either. His reaction to the decision to postpone the
matter (fish farm pollution) was that it was “fair enough”, that it was now up
to the industry to prove itself and that the employees should be relieved. It
was a shocking stand to take considering that, just a few months ago, his party
put the environment, not business, at the top of its agenda.

Dr Busuttil, in an attempt to
reposition the PN to the centre, came out lambasting the government for not
doing enough for low-income workers. But, in the meantime, he failed to come up
with tangible solutions.

Editorjal, The Malta Independent 26.10.2016

The Leader of the Opposition, who
tried his best but failed to convince us all that his party was never against
lowering energy tariffs.

Editorjal, The Malta Independent 26.10.2016

Simon Busuttil has made great
strides forward in his leadership skills since taking over the party’s reins,
but is still not perceived by many, including PN supporters, as being bold
enough.

Editorjal, The Malta Independent on Sunday 13.11.2016

Salvu Mallia, often described as the
PN’s “star candidate”, lashed out at the Labour Party and hurled abuse at its
supporters using colourful and even foul language. As expected, his outburst
raised eyebrows within the PN, including among high-ranking officials. Yet, the
PN, and, particularly, its leader, Simon Busuttil, appear too reluctant to take
a stand, giving rise to concerns from within of a “weak” leadership. Is it
possible Dr Busuttil is happy with the situation? Does he not realise the
longer he decides to do something about it the more the damage he would be
causing to himself and to his party? Is he resigned to share the same fate as
his predecessor who appeared too weak to tackle a vociferous MP? We cannot say
because he prefers to remain mum. His silence speaks volumes; more so his
inaction. There is more that Dr Busuttil and the PN must deal with if they are
to be believed they truly want good governance and clean politics. … The buck
must stop somewhere and somebody must carry the can.

Editorjal, The Times Thursday,
December 29, 2016, 00:01

Dr Busuttil readily admits he has a
hill to climb and has to do that very fast. But, suddenly, he’s climbing it
backwards. He has to watch his back. Possibly more than ever before, Dr
Busuttil is realising what hurdles he has to overcome to deliver his promise of
good governance. Last weekend, bang in the middle of a much-needed financial
campaign, he had the carpet pulled right from underneath him in an
unprecedented assault from a developer of the former ITS site in Paceville. …
It is useless for the PN to argue that the Labour Party is in the pockets of
big business. Big business has spoken and it is pointing at the PN and not at
Labour. The PN has let it down and it now faces its wrath.

Editorjal, The Times 8.3.2017

Unfortunately, how he got into this
whole mess (skandlu db group/PN) in the first place and how he allowed his
party to be exposed to potential blackmail, is still not clear.

Editorjal, The Times 27.3.2017

The PN leader accused the government
of leaving the infrastructure “to crumble” while squandering taxpayers’ money
on nepotism. While that statement is somewhat of an exaggeration.

Editorjal, The Sunday Times 9.4.2017

In a comment beneath her Facebook
post, Dr Farrugia added that the Democratic Party could “teach him [Busuttil]
anything he doesn’t yet know”.

Timesofmalta.com Sunday,
April 9, 2017,
09:53

Simon Busuttil cannot afford to face
the electorate with half-baked proposals or pies in the sky. He cannot falter
in front of journalists who rightly demand to see the beef of any proposal
dished out in the haste of the campaign. A typical example is the populist (or
maybe not so populist, considering that very few will benefit from it) proposal
to give €10,000 to young couples who decide to settle in Gozo. Asked how this proposal
will work, Dr Busuttil was lost in translation and didn’t provide a credible
answer. Instead he told the journalists that his job is to roll out ideas and
beef them up later. Wrong, Mr Opposition Leader. This country has had enough
white elephants and fancy presentations that lead to nowhere. If there was one
thing which helped Konrad Mizzi gain credibility during the 2013 election
campaign it was the level of detail he gave regarding the new power station. …
Dr Busuttil cannot be taken seriously that he can give €10,000 to young couples
settling in Gozo because he doesn’t seem to know how to deliver his promise.

Editorjal, The Malta Independent 11.5.2017

In a public meeting in Vittoriosa
last Sunday, he urged the Attorney General to “publish all reports” related to
Mr Schembri and his accountant, Brian Tonna. Technically, Simon Busuttil was
asking the Attorney General to break the law twice – first by getting a copy of
the report and then by publishing it. … To attack the Attorney General and
expect him to break the law, however, is not on. … the PN’s personal attack on
the Attorney General is nothing short of obnoxious.

Simon Busuttil’s immediate response
to my offer was that since I was somehow associated with the defeated PN and
its past I had become, and I quote, “a liability” to the party. Not quite. My
political soul was moulded in the Eddie Fenech Adami era. It was a time when
the buck always stopped at the party leader’s desk. If Simon Busuttil believed
that I had become a liability to the new PN he wanted to create, the only
gentlemanly response was to respect the decision with magnanimity and a
dignified silence. In other words, it was not Joseph Muscat who bought my
silence, but Simon Busuttil who banished me to it. … The Nationalist Party was
part of my very identity and having its leader eject me put that identity into
question. It was like being thrown out of the home I was born in, and for doing
nothing worse than fiercely defending it till the end. With that one word from
Simon Busuttil I instantly felt detached, disengaged from what was going on
around me in politics and the media. … I never wanted this matter to be
instrumentalised for political reasons, by either side of the spectrum. So I
waited for the right moment. Now that the election is over and Simon Busuttil
has resigned it is time to set the record straight and clear my name once and
for all.

Lou Bondi

Independent.com.mt Sunday,
11 June 2017,
11:00

I spoke to Simon Busuttil two or
three times about my situation. He promised to do something about it but he did
not.

Michael Falzon ex Ministru Nazzjonalista

Maltatoday.com.mt 13
June 2017, 7:30am

Simon Busuttil must go, at least for
the sake of his party. My party, the
one I militated in for some 15 years.
The one I always voted for and the one I canvassed for in the last
general election. … Busuttil must go for a hundred and one reasons. … Busuttil
was elected leader of the Opposition in 2013.
Since then he always trailed behind Joseph Muscat in every opinion poll
I saw by some 10 to 15 points. People
trusted, and still trust, Muscat more than they trust Busuttil. …
Unfortunately for Busuttil, the perception out there is that he is not
electable as a prime minister. … In most opinion polls I followed throughout
these four years, Busuttil was even less popular then his own party. This poses a real problem, as it puts him as
a liability to the party rather than as an asset. And let’s face it, there were instances when
he really was a liability to his party. He was definitely a liability to the PN
when he handpicked Rosette Thake for secretary general of the PN and also when
he, unilaterally, approved Salvu Mallia as a general election candidate … He
was definitely a liability when he burdened the PN with a coalition that only
served to widen the gap between the PL and the PN with the result that the PN
ended up with one seat less in Parliament. … the PN was caught on the wrong
foot when the election was announced, that there was no electoral manifesto
ready, not even a draft and that the very few last minute proposals were
half-baked.

Philip Mifsud ex MP Nazzjonalista

Timesofmalta.com Friday,
June 16, 2017,
06:48

Newly-elected PN MP Therese Comodini
Cachia has admitted that outgoing PN leader Simon Busuttil was wrong to have
appointed her and her former MEP colleague Roberta Metsola as shadow ministers.

Maltatoday.com.mt 16
June 2017, 1:22pm

I still cannot understand how Simon
Busuttil could first be regarded by Nationalists as the hero who, together with
Eddie Fenech Adami, took Malta into the European Union, and then never be able
to be seen as a good leader for the party, and for the country too. The two
issues required different skills, and it is clear that while Nationalists saw
him as having what was needed for the EU membership run-up, and afterwards gave
him so much support in European Parliament elections, they never fully accepted
him as the man who could turn things around after the 2013 debacle. I’ve heard
too many Nationalists say that, with Busuttil at the helm, the party was never
going to make it. They were right. Busuttil will go down in history as the
first Nationalist leader not to have ever been elected Prime Minister since the
first legislative elections in 1921. In the greater scheme of things, and with
the benefit of so much hindsight, it could be argued that Simon Busuttil jumped
the gun. He should never have accepted to replace Tonio Borg as PN deputy
leader on the eve of the 2013 election, at a time when it was clear that the
party was heading towards defeat – and what a massive one it turned out to be.
He would have been in a much stronger position if he had refused Lawrence Gonzi’s overtures, and then be
elected leader in the aftermath without having had a connection with the 2013
defeat. But, as things happened, he was already under a cloud when he became PN
leader, and he was never capable of shaking it off. Added to this, he made
several mistakes which came back to haunt him. He ignored the input and
sacrifices made by some top party members, right until the last moment, when
proposals made by shadow ministers and spokesmen were left out of the election
manifesto while including others without their consent. He defended people who
did not deserve it and distanced himself from others who had shown him loyalty,
but who were discarded at the first opportunity. He was too hard-headed and
surrounded himself by a restricted group of people, listening only to them.
These same people, some of whom were incompetent for the tasks assigned, may
not have had his best interests in mind.

Stephen Calleja

independent.com.mt Wednesday,
21 June 2017,
09:10

Simon Busuttil’s mistake was that he
only went halfway, and he wasn’t strong or aggressive enough when delivering
his message.

Salvu Mallia

Xtra, TVM 22.6.2017

Regrettably I cannot but disagree
with Dr Simon Busuttil’s position. … The only social reality that the
Nationalist Party is ignoring, is the reality of its own voters, who in the
main are against the position being taken by the PN by a vast majority. Please stop and listen. There are many of us, beyond the numbers you
seem to have decided to term insignificant.
the PN change of policy was not the result of an open debate, but a
leadership imposition when Simon Busuttil decided out of his own accord to push
the Party in that direction. … Why an outgoing Leader keeps insisting on wanting
to impose his opinion to the exclusion of all other baffles me.

Tonio Fenech ex Ministru
Nazzjonalista

independent.com.mt Saturday,
1 July 2017,
11:28

In a statement this morning, the
Chamber of Advocates appealed to whoever had influence on public opinion to
hold back from making comments on the judiciary. The chamber said it is highly
concerned about what the Opposition Leader said, as it throws bad light on the
independence and impartiality of the judiciary. The Opposition Leader should
use all legal means to challenge any member of the judiciary but it is not
correct that he speaks in public the way he did, the chamber said. His comments
are meant to put pressure on the judge in question and exceed all limits of
responsibility, it added, calling for their withdrawal.

Independent.com.mt Monday,
31 July 2017,
11:18

Outgoing Opposition Leader Simon
Busuttil is messing up since he resigned the post after the general election
and taking on the role of interim leader he is replaced in September, Frank
Portelli, one of the candidates contesting the PN leadership, said.

Independent.com.mt Thursday,
3 August 2017,
11:31

In a lengthy Facebook post, Mr
(Mario) Galea panned Dr Busuttil's "authoritarian" style, said he
should now "be quiet" while the party picked his successor and
claimed unnamed "prima donnas" with no political experience had been
allowed to hijack the PN. He called on Dr Busuttil to follow in his
predecessor's footsteps and quit his parliamentary seat once a new leader was
in place Doing so, he said, would ensure Dr Busuttil did not "remain in
the shadows" of the PN's new leader.

Timesofmalta.com Saturday,
August 5, 2017, 14:54

The real tragedy is that Simon
Busuttil is going to remain a backbencher and thus will continue to control the
party. He does not wish to leave the
party. On this point, I am with Mario Galea. He should leave, as this will lead
to a dangerous political situation. … All those who therefore wish to carry on
defending Simon Busuttil, despite his despicable behaviour towards conservative
voters within the party, are going to make the situation within the party more
untenable.